GoodSAM volunteers head back out to help

From this week, any registered health care professional who has registered with the GoodSAM app will, once again, be able to respond to a patient suffering a cardiac arrest in their vicinity alongside our EEAST staff and volunteer GoodSAM responders.

The GoodSAM scheme involves alerting appropriately trained, off-duty or volunteer healthcare professionals to patients who are suffering a cardiac arrest within an 800 metre radius of where they are. Once registration is approved, the responder can then download the GoodSAM app which not only alerts them to the incident, it also notifies them of the nearest defibrillator and the code to use to access it. 

There has been a lot of recent media coverage about the importance of cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for patients who have suffered a cardiac arrest. We know that the sooner effective CPR is started, the better the chances of survival for the patient and if a defibrillator is readily available, patients are six times more likely to survive. Since the implementation of the GoodSAM system, there have been many cases where patients in cardiac arrest have gained a return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) and subsequently been discharged from hospital alive.

Nicholas Jones, EEAST IM&T Service Delivery Manager, said: ‘We have been working with the GoodSAM team for almost two years now. Initially, it was just our own front line staff and community first responders who were volunteering when off-duty, but from December 2019 we were able to get some other health care professionals involved as well and I know many of them will have found it frustrating being unable to help over the past year due to COVID. It’s great to be able to tell them that after a thorough review, from today, they can get back out there and really make a difference to people’s lives, receiving alerts from the app and responding to our most sick patients.’

Any member of EEAST front line staff and our community first responders are able to volunteer to be part of the GoodSAM scheme as well as any registered health care professional.

How do I sign up?
To sign up go to https://www.goodsamapp.org/regResponder and enter all of your details.  Please make sure to have an appropriate form of ID ready to upload which evidences your registration (i.e. work ID card, HCPC ID – not just a photo of you).

When signing up you will be asked to select  an organisation. Please select the correct organisation for verification:

EEAST ambulance service staff and community first responders select UK: East of England Ambulance Service – EEAST will review and approve the application. 

Registered Health Care Professionals select GoodSAM as their organisation – GoodSAM will review and approve the application.

Whilst awaiting approval, get ready and download the GoodSAM Responder App onto your smart phone. Once you are approved, log into your device and you will be ready to go!

Contact us
If you have any questions please get in touch at GoodSAM@eastamb.nhs.uk

Published 23rd June 2021